Do Interviewers with High Cooperation Rates Behave Differently? Interviewer Cooperation Rates and Interview Behaviors

Abstract

Interviewers are required to be flexible in responding to respondent concerns during recruitment, but standardized during administration of the questionnaire.These skill sets may be at odds. Recent research has shown a U-shaped relationship between interviewer cooperation rates and interviewer variance: the least and the most successful interviewers during recruitment have the largest interviewer variance components. Little is known about why this association occurs. We posit four hypotheses for this association: 1) interviewers with higher cooperation rates more conscientious interviewers altogether, 2) interviewers with higher cooperation rates continue to use rapport behaviors from the cooperation request throughout an interview, 3) interviewers with higher cooperation rates display more confidence which translates into different interview behavior, and 4) interviewers with higher cooperation rates continue their flexible interviewing style throughout the interview and deviate more from standardized interviewing. We use behavior codes from the Work and Leisure Today Survey (n=450, AAPOR RR3=6.3%) to evaluate interviewer behavior.Our results largely support the confidence hypothesis. Interviewers with higher cooperation rates do not show evidence of being "better" interviewers.

Examining Changes of Interview Length over the Course of the Field Period

“…Additionally, in WLT1, interviewers with higher cooperation rates have shorter interviews, although this effect did not replicate in WLT2 and is fully absorbed when including indicators of the respondent-interviewer interaction. More successful interviewers may also be more fluent in their delivery, shortening the length of the interview (Olson, Kirchner, and Smyth 2016).…”

“…Interviewers who are more skilled with "tailoring" (nonstandardized recruitment techniques) might revert to those more often during the measurement situation (Brunton-Smith, Sturgis, and Williams 2012;Snijkers, Hox, and de Leeuw 1999). There is initial evidence that interviewer cooperation rates are also associated with different types of interviewer behaviors during the interview, especially related to display of confidence such as fewer disfluent paralinguistic cues and less stuttering (Olson, Kirchner, and Smyth 2016). Thus, we expect that interviewers with higher cooperation rates, reflecting more successful experiences at recruitment, will have shorter interviews.…”

It Takes Two: The Round-Robin Methodology for Investigative Interviewing Research

“…For example, effective communication between the witness and the interviewer is paramount for obtaining investigation relevant information ( Fisher, 2010 ). Skilled interviewing also requires versatility ( Olson et al, 2016 ; Christiansen et al, 2018 ), a sound understanding of memory processes ( Hope, 2013 ), as well as, active listening skills, and accuracy in self-assessment ( Walsh et al, 2017 ). However, the extent to which those interviewer traits interact with various witness traits remains under-investigated.…”